Alessandro MS1000 and MS Ultimate - DIY & modding [56K warning] - Page 38

I'm thinking about picking up a set of MS-1i once someone decides to post them on the FS forum . I'm a big fan of the mushroom cup design

I believe the dimensions are too large, compare them to the ones posted on the first few pages.

Woah, thats really weird. Could the additional distance between your ear and the driver cause the bass to disappear? The same sorta thing happened to me when I put flats on my Grados over the "regular bowl" pads. The bass increased substantially, but the soundstage diminished.

Thats still really weird. I guess Grados have some differences between their drivers.

You try dampening the driver with dynamat?

Well there have been some folks around here that have gotten positive results by dampening the driver... i think they refer to it as the Grado Blob mod as they've noticed that even some grado drivers have come off the factory lines with some sort of blob.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f4/gra...er-mod-183338/

Did you do any experiments with smaller or larger holes and reducing the number of them? Reducing would be easy enough to just cover them with tape for rough impressions before making a new set of spacers. Heck, even a slight increase in the length by 2-3mm should bring back the bass as it almost sound like the current length made a negative reinforcement.

My repaired Grados arrived last week. I'm really amazed at the SQ differences between the 325 and RS-1s even out of my crappy Audigy 2 ZS external box's headphone jack. The RS-1 will stay stock, but the 125s and 325s are going to be modded soon. First mod to the 325s will be new cable, then screens and I'll compare them to the RS-1s again. After that, the 125s and 325s get MS-1000 mods.

That is very disturbing news. Clearly there are huge differences between the Alessandro phones. Was it perhaps a new MS-1i?

I figured you had, but I thought I would confirm it. Did you also try different diameter holes? Maybe 1.2mm instead of 1mm? Then there is the need to use a less dense felt. Oh and don't forget to sacrifice a virgin Habanero to the chili pepper gods this month during the full moon at precisely 3:33AM your local time. You can't drink anything after you eat it either, or the gods won't be happy and bless you with the perfect response and SQ you want. It's all part of the black magic arts you know...

I suspect the perception of more bass is relative to a slightly higher (or lower) resonant bass frequency so that pair will need a tweaked length on the distancer (probably 2-3mm shorter or longer) and different diameter on the holes.

I think that particular unit was the exception, not the rule.

My friend also have a pair of MS-1 (recently bought) that is very bass heavy. Haven't tried converting it to MS1000 yet, but I will try and see if his bassy MS-1 behaves the same as what nickchen has described.

I personally think it has something to do with the burn in. I made my friend a burn-in playlist, and he left the headphones plugged in and went out of town for a week (a total of 240+ hours). He came back and was surprised at the amount of bass the phone pushes.

Basically the playlist looks like this:
Pink noise - 5 minutes
Sine Sweep - 10 seconds
10Hz - 1 minute
Sine Sweep - 10 seconds
20Hz - 1 minute
... (increments of 10Hz and Sine Sweep in between)
150Hz -1 minute
Sine Sweep - 10 seconds
Drums - 2 minutes
Repeat with duplicated files at different % in volume adjustment setting in iTunes

You get the point.